and who called ups? you did, bob. i just asked a question. it takes a long time to pack a bowling ball. the last guy pitched more ball packers. but you... you consulted ups. you found a better way. that's logistics. that's margin. find out what else ups knows. i'll do that. you're on a roll. that's funny. i wasn't being funny, bob. i know. good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. with critics calling for u.n. ambassador susan rice to resign when they said the administration lied about who was behind the attacks in benghazi, libya, senator john kerry called for rice to stay on. the republican party has severed

ties with a virginia based consulting group it has paid $3 million to this year alone. the group is being investigated for voter fraud in nine counties in florida. right now, my story of the week. the republican bubble trap. if you follow politics, you've probably noticed that polling of the presidential election has swung quite decidedly in the president's favor over the last couple of weeks. the real clear politics polling average now has obama up 4.1 points over mitt romney in national poles. nate silver's prediction model put barack obama's odds of winning the election above 80% for the first time ever. swing state polling just this week seems to confirm the trend. a new quinnipiac "new york times" cbs poll shows surprisingly strong leads for the president. the galup tracking poll shows obama up six points. it's pretty hard to survey the polling data and not come to the

conclusion that barack obama is beating mitt romney, that if the election were held today barack obama would win and that romney has a relatively steep though certainly not insurmountable uphill climb to victory. that is if you operate in the alternate epi stem mick universe of the media. >> that begs the question, are these polls dishonest? >> no. look, we endo you them with a falls scientific precision. >> these polls, i don't pay attention to them. >> polling is very good at saying how you're going to vote. it's very bad at saying who's going to vote. >> these two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over. >> we should note that fox news's own polls have been pretty much in line with everyone else's, but it's not just observers making the claim the polls are rigged. the romney campaign itself is now getting in on the act. >> some of these polls have been called into question because they assume a higher democratic turnout in 2012 than we

experienced in 2008. >> for the record, that's not really true, but that doesn't matter. conservatives are spending hundreds, maybe thousands of man hours, far more appropriately bro hours writing long, tortured pseudo statistical analyses of these polls. the proprietor of one of the go to sites of this analysis unskewed polls.com told us it has gone from 15,000 hitsds a day and 200,000. the sites founder dean chambers is planning an expansion. i have a been hearing from people inside the tea party movement and republican movement calling to say what i'm doing. they're glad to see that someone's questioning the credibility of national polls. now to the conservatives and republicans watching out there right now, i know what you're thinking. it's not just people on the right who fall victim to this way of thinking. you're right. in fact, i can recall with somewhat pathetic acuity spending hours on the internet

in the waning days of the 2000 election why the lack of cell phones led to underreporting john kerry's strength. we all as humans are subject to confirmation bias. the urge to confirm our ideological priers. the problem is the institutional structure slavishly caters to this disposition. the institutional and market incentives on the right all push towards feeding the audience what they want to hear and make a good buck while doing it at the expense of actually giving them a handle on some basic aspects of reality. glen beck left fox news to create his own hermetically sealed media environment. he has a radio show, his own website and tv network where the latter first runs stories reported by the former. while his audience has shrunk dramatically, npr reports his company, the blaze, is expected to rake in more than $40 million this year. his radio contract just doubled to 100 million over the next five years.

the increasingly claustrophobic parallel universe isn't something that lefties like myself have noticed. julia sanchez coined the term epi stem mick closure which is found in the multimedia array of blogs, radio programs and magazines and of course fox news where, quote, whatever conflicts with reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media and is therefore incompetent so he fak tow not to be trusted. this epi stem mick closure can render the ecosystem fragile. i think we are seeing right now just how prophetic sanchez was. the political problems the republican party is facing, losing ground not only in the general election but a wide swath of congressional races is due to the fact that the elites of that party have become so

used to operating within the confines of conservatism they've forgotten how to persuade people who don't already agree with them. the we built this theme from the republican administration was a tone deaf joke that played off a gaffe that didn't resonate with the general electorate. look at the difference between clint eastwood's speech inside the hall to outside the hall where it was met with something more like confused amusement. and the ultimate example of the cost of the conservative bubble are mitt romney's 47% comments, versions of which have become common place to the point of cliche in right wing circles and ones in which romney offered inside the safety and conservative bubble and it was leaked out. in the song, 10 crack commandments biggie smalls offered a set of rules for drug dealers who want to avoid

perils. >> never get high on your own supply. >> same with political strategists. don't start believing that everyone out there in the voting booth is seeing the world the way you do. the gop has i think lost sight of this simple wisdom. they are now smoking what they're dealing. it's a big part of why those poll numbers look the way they do and a good reminder of the dysfunction and incompetence that happen when people in charge only listen to themselves. i'm going to talk to my panel about the consequences of living inside the conservative bubble when we get back. maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ...nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this.

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increasingly cramped confines of the conservative bubble in which i think a lot of political operatives are operating and how that is hurting them in the general election possibly is a good clue as to why mitt romney's not winning the presidential election, why he's

down, and why also other congressional candidates and senate candidates are doing poorly. right now i'm joined by sheila bair, author of "bull by the horns fighting to save main street from wall street and wall street from itself." . she's worked as research and director council to republican bob dole. great to have you here. joe weisenthal, deputy editor at business insider. msnbc joy reid at our sister website thegrio.com. and josh barro. it was 90 billion views? >> we're pushing 100 billion. >> paid views, yes. >> i'm going to retire. >> that's right. off the royalties from that. if only. if only every writer in america -- >> isn't that how it works?

>> isn't that how it works? i found the polling stuff to be kind of remarkable this week. you know, the polling i think, look, let's not overstate how accurate polls are. there's margins of error and it's also possible that we are systematically getting something wrong. there were models in the big wall street banks tharp systematically miss pricing real estate. i think if you're empirically minded and look at the data, the president is winning the race. his lead has increased over the past, you know, month or so. it looks like from the polling we're seeing the 47% comments have hurt him. and -- have like what tht of it is. i mean, maybe you're right, but then isn't it all just going to on election day be exposed as like -- i'm just fascinated by the growth of this industry, joe. >> well, one of the things that

i see, and this is outside of politics because i write about economics so much, is i use charts a lot in my writing, you know, comparing public sector employment, private sector. i see the same thing all the time. this aggression against data or they're convinced that all data is manipulated darks at that is a lie. if i show that private sector employment has actually done relatively well under obama, relatively well compared to past recoveries and most of the job losses have been in the public sector, people think it's a lie. the debate ends because i can't, you know -- there's nowhere to go from there. they refuse to believe it. i see this happen -- so i see this happen all the time. i think what i thought when i saw the unskewed polls.com site, this is really embarrassing. this is like normal people escaping to the shelter of this poll, the site went up a week ago. when we put up posts about it, we were getting tons of search hits for it. so there's this huge thirst. as you said, i remember during

past elections, every losing candidate has had this. the hillary voters in the 2008 primary had their own circle. they were convinced that the support for obama was way overstated. you were totally right about 2004, the 2002. like every election this happens, but the weird how this really happened in the last week was kind of remarkable. >> isn't this -- i think this is sort of a subset of a larger trend on the right? it's been going on for a really long time. there's a sort of combination of self-pity and sort of feeding the idea that they are victims of this massive conspiracy by the left to lie about everything and that they are truly the majority. i've been calling it the fun house mirror. i love your characterization of it even more. but there is this notion that everything is a lie. climate change is a lie. the idea that liberals are just lying to you all the time. this distrust of media, distrust of numbers, distrust of data. everything is a lie. >> it's also funny because a lot of the paul ryan supporters, it's not politics. it's math. liberals talk about science and

now conservatives are like all of this budget stuff, sorry, is just math. we have to slash medicare and so forth. so it is funny that the party of math now is like creating their own -- >> alternate polling. >> sheila, i want to get your thoughts on this. i want to note for people watching this, josh, you worked on mitt romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign. >> that's right. >> you've been a republican -- i don't know if you are a registered republican. >> i am. >> you worked for bob dole. i want to make sure people watching, we're not a bunch of liberals talking about those crazy people out there because you've been in the republican party. you worked on the republican party. i think you consider yourself a republican now? >> absolutely. >> i'm curious what you make of this. am i wrong? is this a natural human instinct that the internet cult at this vats and people do it or is there a broader issue here with this kind of turning inward if that's happened i think among the right? >> well, i think it's kind of a silly debate about the polls. you're right, all the polls are showing consistent trends. i think where republicans should be focusing is their message and their message is not resonating.

what my generation is saying, they're listening to the wrong rhetoric. >> as opposed to getting high on your own supply? >> that's right. so i think bill clinton really nailed it at the convention. he said -- i think you do have a point, the economy is not in good shape. the middle voters, which are the voters -- who are the voters that mitt romney needs to speak to, what they're hearing is that we want to reduce taxes on the rich and deregulate again. that's what got us into trouble. you know, if they think that we are just going to repeat the things that brought us the terrible problems we had in 2007 and 2008, that's not going to resonate. i don't think that is his message and that's what's coming across. they need to focus on that and not whose poll is right. >> do you think that's the product of some tactical errors or the product of a broader shift in the balance of power within the coalition that is the republican party? >> i think it is part of the balance of power. there's a certain -- ats the

extreme, there's a certain core that just wants to unseat this incumbent no matter what and they don't understand that you need to provide an alternative. people are not going to vote against somebody. they've been burned before. they want to know what mitt romney is going to do. mitt romney is going to help everybody, not just certain segments of the population. >> hasn't the problem been mitt romney is only speaking to the base? the denialism is their core. they didn't believe bill clinton was genuinely elected. we have to legislate voter fraud. the only reason democrats win is because of fraud. acorn somehow manipulated the electoral system to place this fraudulent foreigner into the white house. there's denialism about everything. i think they've built up a media that is willing to kater to the sort of sense of denialism and victimology. if you hermetically seal yourself into media, you can believe it's all a lie, right? >> i think we've seen this on the left. in 2004, it's not the polls

before the election and the insistence afterwards. the voting machines were rigged. i think the left got past that. they didn't go into the 2008 campaign. >> and there were structures in place institutionally in which that was -- again, there's a human instinct there. the question is are the structures in place institutionally there that people that pursue that line will profit greatly? is there an incentive to pursue that such that you can get a huge check, huge prom negligence or actually get elevated. that i think is a big question. >> i think the nice thing about this example is that we'll know in six weeks. the election will be over and we'll know whether the polls were correct or not. i don't think the republicans are going to, you know, insist that the election was stolen. >> right. >> unless, you know, it's an outcome like florida, which i don't think is going to happen. so i think the party will have to get past this because they will have a reality check. it's not like climate change where you can deny the data and then you have to wait 100 years to figure out whether you were right or not.

this one at least is just time limited. the thing that actually most reminds me of is this network of websites on the right insisting that the inflation statistics are rigged and that we've had 8 or 9% inflation for the last decade. that has also been disproved because if tharp true, we've been in a recession for ten years. >> that's right. >> people still believe that. >> one of the things that's really interesting that's happening now is, a, there's a debate happening among the right that is the debate that should be happening after election day, why mitt romney lost. it's happening right now. it's still a very close race. it's still a very winnable race for mitt romney, a. and, b, i think all of the big money is contributing to this. i want to talk about how that plays into this right after we take this break. droid does. and does it launch apps by voice while learning your voice ? launch cab4me. droid does. keep left at the fork. does it do turn-by-turn navigation ? droid does. with verizon, america's largest 4g lte network, and motorola,

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you're looking for a place for your life to happen. so one of the factors i think that's driving this -- the message of the republican party being oddly tone deaf in terms of talking to middle class voters particularly is the influence of big money, is the

influence of the donor class. we saw the republican natural convention, the we built this theme, which i thought was just a really tone deaf theme. it was based on a supposed gaffe by the president which itself was obscure. it was like telling an inside joke. and then it was also skewed at entrepreneurs who were, great, i love entrepreneurs, great people, but a very small portion of the electorate. most people work for someone else. the vast majority of voters have a boss. they go to work every day. they're signing, as someone said the other day, the back of the paycheck, not the front of it. i think part of what's driving the society from mitt romney's position is the fact that you have all of these huge donors in the super pacs and in the world, who that's their world view. they want to see themselves celebrated and they believe that if only you celebrate them, if only you give the folks the rhetoric they want, this is what you saw in the questions in the infamous 47% tape, you saw people being, why don't you go around and talk about your success, right? i think actually we're seeing

the effects of big money negatively on the republicans because this big money is pushing them towards messages that aren't that effective. >> i don't think this is principally about big money. i think this is a message that sells to the tea party base in the republican party which does not principally consist of people that are wealthy. it is small business people which is one of the most conservative demographics voting groups in the country. people who own small businesses are much more likely to vote republican than wealthy professionals of similar economic means. so i think that the -- i think the reason that romney feels trapped in this message or feels compelled to keep using it is that it does sell to a significant part of his base. it's not a few people giving him money who like it. >> i don't know if that's true. i think the biggest trick and sort of the most genius thing that the right has done over the last 30 years is get cloth coat republicans who, like you said, receive a paycheck rather than writing one to kind of worship the job creators, to sort of have this reverence for these

business people. when i was in tampa for the republican convention, it was a giant sort of self-pity party for people who were rich and who want to be celebrated. you see the wall street whining about why is barack obama mean to us? why doesn't he celebrate us? why doesn't he say how great we are? and then culminating in the tweets on labor day from republican lawmakers saying happy labor day to bosses, entrepreneurs. this is your day. no, it 17b9. it's labor day. >> yeah, i agree. i think that theme does resonate certainly with a broad base of the republican party. i think with middle voters it does as well. we are, you know, culturally a nation, we celebrate hard work, entrepreneurship, innovation, and even people, you know, who work for apple. you know, they still celebrate steve jobs, one of the best entrepreneurs to ever hit our economy. i think it does resonate. i understand what he was trying to -- the point he was trying to make. i think elizabeth warren probably did it better early on

but you do need to be careful. in some ways it's stating the obvious. government has a role. they have infrastructure, education, we all need that to perform our jobs, our start-up businesses, whatever. but, you know, is it going the next step and saying, well, you know, no matter how successful you are we're going to take some of it. that's what people were hearing. that's where the president needs to be careful. i do think that that theme did resonate. >> you could imagine, you're a person of -- a perfect person to channel this. you can imagine a very effective conservative -- republican message that was also kind of antiwall street? >> yeah. i wish we did. >> yes. exactly. >> i'm not into wall street. independent of wall street. >> the question is why has -- >> that's one of the great mysteries. i think this is where right and left should agree. i think this is not ideological. these guys are still threats to our financial system. they should stand on their own two feet. taxpayers shouldn't have to bail them out. that's a good conservative

principal or progressive or liberal principal. >> here yours' getting to an issue about the donors. >> i was leading everyone to water. thank you for taking a sip. >> mitt, take on wall street, take on the banks, take on, you know, really hit this issue hard and i think it would resonate with a certain ideological wing, it would resonate with a lot of people that aren't ideological but are really upset with the bailouts and still think that the bank bailouts are a big reason why the economy is not so great and so on. but i think it would be too alienating. there is this sort of like anti-wall street combined with a hard money crowd. >> i find them fascinating, those people. >> yes, you have to. but it's just too impossible. i just have a hard time seeing that really get all the way up to the top given the source of so much money and the way wall street has shifted. >> because of the donor becoming -- this is the thing. i mean, we've seen all the stories about wall street shifting their donations to mitt

romney because they don't like being called fat cats. obviously mitt romney comes from the financial world. he's not a great messenger to talk about the -- >> there is an argument that it would look completely absurd. >> we have forgotten, i think, including we in the media, that the tea party started with rick santelli who is a reporter from cnbc complaining about dead beat homeowners. the tea party movement itself was wall street people complaining about poor people or people who were in trouble financially. >> but it took -- i think it took root because of some actual genuine anger at the banks. >> right. >> i totally agree with you. >> it's so ironic. >> we lose sight of that. it started against the banks. no, it started yelling at homeowners, loosers in rick santelli's words. >> exactly. >> there is an opportunity to split the republican base and the donor base. honestly, there are people in the hedge fund base who view this as a business opportunity because they think it will clear

space for them to get into business because the banks won't be in there. there is a message that could be crafted that would have a financial base and would appeal to a lot of voters who see the banks as having gotten a free ride. i think jon huntsman tried to be in that space. >> he got nowhere. >> i'm writing him in. >> are you really? >> for this one i am. >> he was poking social conservatives in the eye for no good political reason. i think he was a flawed candidate. >> there is a little bit of an inconsistency, so you hear a lot of sort of like populist deregulation. it's like oh, we're going to repeal dodd frank but is that -- >> we'll really screw those banks. >> yeah. you hear that. so it's just a really difficult message for all kinds of reasons. >> i want to talk about the other huge cost of the republican bubble, which i am more and more convinced -- it goes by the name of paul ryan. i think if you look at the polling actually, naming paul ryan to the ticket was a big mistake. let's look at some of the numbers in ohio and florida that

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47% of the people will vote for the president no matter what. they're reliant on government. they believe they're victims who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they're entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it and they will vote for this president no matter what. and so my job is not to worry about those people. i'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. >> that's the new ad the obama campaign is running. i think it's seven swing states. that's not like something you put on the web, that's running in swing states. it's pretty brutal. they didn't try to gild the lily. it speaks for itself. all people at the table are entitled to food which is why we have this. we believe you're entitled to food. i think when you look at what's the thing that's pushed the polls apart, there's the

convention bounce. look at the internals in florida and ohio. look at florida. huge swing from romney to obama among those 65 and soolder in august. today he's up 4. so -- and we see what the actual results are. obama is now beating mitt romney. he was down. ohio polling. obama was down 8 points among people 65 and older. today he is up 1. i think that's -- and he writes persuasively that republicans, again, get smoking what they were dealing thinking that their desire to see the end of medicare, to see the entitlement state shrunk was a political message broadly decided to double down on it and put paul ryan on the ticket and went right after it. these are the results. >> i think much like playing the

notorious big, you are spot on. i look at the same interges. the only thing that has changed demonstrably is seniors. seniors have been so resistant to barack obama. they've been the one constituency that had not warmed up to him at all and in 2010 they were a big reason why that wave washed up against democrats. now you actually see in iowa, in ohio in these swing states seniors moving back for one reason, medicare. the only thing special about paul ryan was this budget that he put forth that wants to voucher rise medicare. by putting him on the ticket romney owns it whether he likes it or not. >> which they all voted for and convinced themselves was a smartd thing to do. they walked the plank on a vote that was purely symbolic. it wasn't going anywhere. they got the entire caucus to vote to voucherize medicare. the whole caucus voted for it and -- >> and they went for the second version too. >> they voted for it twice. >> you talk about bubbles, i think that's a different bubble.

that's kind of like the serious people bubble. so it's actually kind of bipartisan. >> right. >> in washington where you have -- >> that's a good point. >> democrats, the whole simple son bowles thing. people on both sides of the aisle. walkingish. not walking. kind of like specific proposals about how we're going to reduce the -- all of this. the average voter. so within elite circles, big swath of the media i would say there was this glow that envelopes people that take on these things. i think the public does worry about the national debt and the deficit in the abstract but as soon as it starts coming to specifics and you start talking about what's really going to cut, it doesn't play very well. >> i think this is interesting in part because the republican strategy on medicare was a little more complicated than just vote for this. >> it was much more complicated. very tangled. >> what they were trying to do was split it where they were going to say if you're over 55 you're going to keep what you have now. in fact, we're going to spend $700 billion more on medicare over the next ten years.

paul ryan instantly reversed the position that he had when he was in congress. it kept the president's medicare cuts. romney will repeal that. ryan says that too. it looked to me like that was working, that they were actually managing to sort of get to the president's left on medicare and attack him and say the president's going to cut your medicare, we're going to protect it. i don't know why it's not still working. >> here's why. so they've decided they're going to pick this fight on medicare. it's a bizarre fight they picked for the reasons you named. clearly they're the party that wants to shrink the entitlement state. you have to see what they say behind closed doors or read conservative blogs. we know what the conservative apparatus in the republican party thinks about the entitlement state. they want to say we're going to be more extravagant to you seniors. they made the mistake of picking a fight on an issue that the democrats have reputational capital built up over time. it's not sustainable. if democrats went out and

convinced them that they were the party that would give tax cuts to the rich, it would not be possible. it's not credible. we understand which party does that and which one opposes it. i'm seeing this play out. when i was in nevada all of these ads were being run about medicare. this is madness. if you're a republican, don't pick a fight on who's going to spend more on medicare. that is not your comparative advantage, right? >> not only that, but don't try to divide current seniors basically saying -- >> that might be smart politically actually. >> it isn't working. >> that's true. >> seniors care about the medicare for the future too. and they don't like the idea of changing the program, for your grandkids, they're getting a voucher. they don't like it. >> before i let you go, josh barro. a smart point from my matt who e-mailed the ten crack commandments. we missed an important point is never let them know how much dough you hold. mitt romney is listening to

that. josh barro, column nist at blockberg view. thank you for being here. a major new revelation about the strength of the obama recovery up next. >> announcer: brought to you by chase sapphire preferred. get two times the points on all your travel and dining purchases. why not take a day to explore your own backyard? with two times the points on travel, you may find yourself asking why not, a lot. chase sapphire preferred. there's more to enjoy. [ male announcer ] introducing a reason to look twice. the entirely new lexus es and the first-ever es hybrid. this is the pursuit of perfection.

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♪ ♪ we've been discussing new poll numbers suggesting the president, the election shifting decidedly in the president's favor. for months the political wisdom has been this election would be a nail biter. the lagging economic economy would weigh the president down. republicans thought all mitt romney would have to do is ride vast waves of discontent into the white house. somehow despite what appears to be on the surface a dispiriting economic recovery, obama is surging. in ohio the president is ahead by 10 points. the same poll found him up 9 points in florida.

perhaps even more surprisingly, voters in both states now trust president obama more than mitt romney to turn the economy around. this really isn't looking like the election anyone expected. so what happened? the predominant theory seems to be that mitt romney is an inept candidate, his repeated gaffes have set him back against a weak incumbent. that may be true. the facts suggest something deeper and more important going on. the economic recovery may be a bit morrow bust than we all assumed. the number of jobs created from march 2011 to march 2012 was underestimated by 380,000. taking those new jobs into account he has overseen a net positive 125,000 jobs added to the economy even if you take into account the massive job losses from the financial crisis at the start of his term. on friday the university of michigan's consumer confidence

index reached its second highest level in five years. joining us to talk about this is ro khanna, author of "entrepreneural nation: why manufacturing is still key to america's future." deputy secretary in the obama congress. great to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> we know the headline numbers. gdp growth is down, i don't think anyone thinks, awesome, 1.1, 1.2% growth. no one likes that. unemployment, too high. no one is happy except for some of the people on federal reserve board. is happy with unemployment above 8% and yet i think the economic picture is a bit more complicated than the headline numbers indicate. i have been very critical from the left of the recovery have been surprised. joe, are there things you're seeing in the data that suggest why voters seem more bullish on the economy than you might anticipate they would be. >> let me break it down.

>> break it down. >> there's two ways of looking at it. one is, the economy is bad. the unemployment is way too high. gdp growth is slow is a really disappointing. we'd like it much stronger. on the other hand, there is this relative way of looking at it compared to other crises, compared to what's going on in europe, compared to what's going on in china where you have to be impressed by the resilience of the u.s. from the voters perspective, there are two interesting things. housing is starting to come back. the positive effects of that are going to be huge in terms of wealth effect, in terms of what people feel comfortable spending their money on. this was the core of the collapse and now it's coming back. the other thing is this sort of steady improvement. the nonfarm payrolls creation is spotty. you see the steady improvement in the decline of jobless claims. >> yeah. >> and that is like a sense of everyone looking around seeing fewer and fewer people being laid off all the time. i think that has to create a positive feeling for a lot of voters, that things are not only -- that things are

consistently getting less bad. we have a few charts here. this is the jobless claims year over year. you see them falling off since 2009, right? >> right. so, yeah, basically that number has been about negative 10%. so every year -- every week jobless claims have been about 10% lower than they were a year lower. that's incredibly steady improvement. basically for two years no worsening. >> here's household debt as a percentage of gdp. a big part of the balanced recession is getting rid of it. you see that starting to come down although if you look at that graph there's a long way to go, right? that's house loeld debt as a percentage of gdp. >> that's one reason to think it will be slow for a long time. when people talk about the debt in politics, they're usually talking about the national debt. >> right. >> this is the debt that was at the core of the crisis. this is the debt that's actually improving. >> finally, you said compared to post crisis recovery, because

this to me is fascinating. when you start the -- it was clear in the campaign in the white house thought, you know, the absolute numbers are rough in terms of re-election. we have to make an argument about the counter factual, about how we saved the country from real peril and there's been a lot of debate on the left, on the right about the rescue plan, the bailouts, policy known as extend and pretend which is basically the hand waive at the housing problem. you make a case that that's been quite effective. you make a case in your book that it's unjust and somewhat outrageous and i'd like you guys to litigate that right after this break. ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] at&t. the nation's largest 4g network.

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talking about the economic recovery and the role it's playing and the way it has not created the critical drag on the president the way one expected with 8% on unemployment. one of the arguments is it could have been worse.

the rescue is effective. the conventional political wits come to is you can't sell that to voters. i think they've been so insistent on reminding everyone in the crisis. joe, you put up this chart on business insider the other day about comparing employment recovery in various different financial crisis. sweden, japan, and what you see is that the u.s., which is that red line there, right, is doing much better, right? things cut off and didn't go as deep it's coming back fast jer than any other one except for japan which stays the same for 20 years. you're very critical of a lot of the actions tharp taken around the rescue. do you feel that -- do you feel that it was the right thing to do? do you feel like the policy was handled well? what was wrong with it? >> well, i think in 2008 we were dealing with a situation potentially spinning out of control and so we threw a lot of money at it. we were flying blind.

we didn't have a playbook. i didn't really like what we did then but i at least understood it better. in 2008 we did have a stable financial system. i am a rip the band aid off kind of person. i think that's when we should have started imposing some discipline at least for sick institutions, making them sell their toxic assets that would have given them a realistic mark. that continues to be a problem with the bank balance sheets. a lot of the assets are created at an inflated value. if you prop the bank up and leave all the bad assets there, what do they do? they nurse their balance sheets. when you get into a business cycle you want a healthy institution willing to go in there and take some risks and to lend. sick banks with a lot of bad assets just don't do that. there was the moral hazard problem. i'm he sorry there was. there needed to be accountability. there never was. we kept bailing institutions out. i do think in the housing

policy, we should have done more. we needed to get the mortgages restructured. we didn't do that very well. i think we would have had a morrow bust economy if we had tried to fundamentally restructure bank balance sheets in 2009. we didn't. and, you know, i guess i'm trying to prove a negative now too. >> sure. >> but i do. i think history is really more on my side than his. >> no, but i want to get you to weigh in on this, ro. one of the things i think is interesting i remember the great debate in 2008. what do we do with these toxic assets. then it was like, whatever happened to those, right? >> it's hard to deal with them. it's hard to write checks to big institutions. set up a facility, an auction process. they would have taken losses if the government had forced them to sell mainly bad mortgages. a lot of bad securities. a lot of bad commercial real estate loans. you would have had a type of process to let you know what the true value of the assets is.

you would have expanded balance sheet capacity to lend. >> ro, what's your thought? >> we have to remember where the economy was at that point. there was thought that the market would go down to 3,000. there was a fear of actual collapse and i think what the president did is let's stabilize the economy. what's resonating in ohio and other places is his focus on manufacturing, on exports. people are respondsing to a sense that he has a long-term vision to what's going to make america economically competitive. i think what the president's strategy was is let's stabilize the financial system and then build a new strong foundation. >> but what does that vision -- part of the issue there, right, is there's the vision in the future which he talks about all the time and then there's the current problem and i think -- i felt sometimes a little lack of urgency coming out of washington about the jobs crisis and even in terms the way the president talks about the present from the white house itself in terms of talking about jobs. >> well, i think that the president if you look at what

they did with the small business administration, with the funding of loans to small businesses, with the export initiative, with the focus on manufacturing for the first time in 30 years, i mean, those were things tharp going to create jobs and even on china, the huge debate about who was going to be tough on china. yesterday the news was that the chinese currency is the highest it's ever been relative to the dollar. i think that led from an administration focus on the chinese currency. so i don't think that there was a sense that immediate jobs don't enter. i think americans are very smart. they care about our economic future. i don't think it's right that the long term doesn't sell. people have a stake in whether we're going to be a great economy and i think the president's vision is selling. it's the immediate and the future. >> what's interesting though is i think during that time, i find myself agreeing with you on this, is that that moment when t.a.r.p. happened, that was the last time that we had sort of a bipartisan agreement that we have to act together for the future of the country, right? since then you've had republicans i think hedging in

part i think because from a political standpoint a bad economy would be helpful to them in the elections, but at that moment you had john boehner weeping on the floor of the house asking people to pass t.a.r.p. which republicans didn't organically want to do but everyone did it. i think there was caution in the stimulus. i think we did miss an opportunity for holding wall street accountable. and i think that that moment was partly because of political caution maybe. i don't know what it was, but it does feel like he could have done that. >> wall street's influence is very -- you know, i do think this administration's economic team has been wall street friendly, i do. i think the president has the worst of both worlds and they don't like him because he's been honest about it. the thing about the bailout, would you do the bailouts again? i'm sorry, it makes my skin crawl. the bailouts were great, they saved the system, they made money. the cynicism that has been created, the moral hazards that have been created. a lot of people on wall street would like to take those risks

again. >> the bailouts were a good idea but we could have done more to hold accountable? >> we had to do something. we were in a crisis in 2008. in 2009 we had stabilized things. we could have imposed accountability. people at the fed didn't want to do that. it didn't get done. >> hold that thought. senator sherrod brown will weigh in on all of this when we come back. while learning your voice ? launch cab4me. droid does. keep left at the fork. does it do turn-by-turn navigation ? droid does. with verizon, america's largest 4g lte network, and motorola, droid does. get $100 off select motorola 4g lte smartphones like the droid razr.

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good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes here with sheila bair, author of bull by the horns fighting to save main street from wall street and wall street from itself. former chair of the fdic from the joe weisenthal. and joy reid and ro khanna. we're talking about the recovery and the complexity of the

recovery. that to me is what is surfacing in this campaign. the recovery isn't one thing. it's not great. it's not terrible. for different segments of the population there's been different benefits. my own pet theory about the recovery is that the biggest critique of the recovery isn't the aggregate. we showed a graph of how compared to other financial -- the aftermath of other financial crises, employment has come back faster. that's quite remarkable, right? it's distributional. it has benefitted certain people way more than others. wages are stagnant. household debt is rare high. in 2010 the first year of the recovery, 93% of income gains went to the top income. 93%. the first year of the recovery. >> nice profits. >> ro, what is your response for someone who worked in the obama administration. the president has focused a lot on the middle class, both in his policies and the rhetoric, the

fact that the way the economy is playing out distributionly has been so skewed. >> i think that's a fair critique. my personal view is there should have been a larger stimulus. that would have helped consumer demand, it would have helped the middle class more. the distributional effects are skewed. the stock market, a lot of people have their pensions in there. a lot of unions have pensions in there. the stabilization of the market and taking the market from 6,000 -- >> and the growth. >> and the growth has helped a lot of middle class families. i think that's being reflected in the battleground support. >> joe? >> one area where i agree with sheila completely is the sort of failure to look at that household debt to gdp chart that you showed earlier and say, this is the problem. there has been a lot of confusion, i think, people talk about the banks, the national debt, whatever. this was the core of the issue, the fact that households had too much debt and that the recovery and the decline was going to be all about this deleveraging and

to the proper response -- they did it to some extent but to really think about using the government's resources to ameliorate this issue. >> i want to bring in democratic senator sherrod brown who is in a competitive race to keep his seat. great to have you this morning. >> good to be back. >> we've had a lot of presidential activity in your state. we've also seen the polls move in democrat's direction, both in your direction and in the president's direction, and i want you to weigh in on this. what does the economy look like from the perspective of the ohio middle class working class voter? >> well, i think increasingly better. not great. i think people are still anxious, of course. people still look around. they see more people hired. they see more manufacturing jobs. they don't see enough yet and that's our challenge. ohio's unemployment rate in the last two plus years has gone from over 10.5 to under 7.5%. much of that is the auto rescue. much of that as joe and others were talking on the show is the

discussion of exports and attention to manufacturing and spa raising the loan limits for small manufacturing companies and we've seen trade enforcement create jobs. there's a new steel mill in youngstown that wouldn't have been there if we hadn't enforced the tubular steel rules. we're seeing more tire jobs in finley, more steel jobs in lorraine and cleveland so all of that comes together in a way that makes people a good bit more optimistic but still anxious. >> there's a long discourse among progressives in every election about the white working class. we've lost the white working class to the democrats. i thought this chart from i believe public religion and research institute at pew about the white working class voters. they're roughly split between the president and romney in

everywhere but the south where there's a huge gap. the one region where white working class voters are supporting the president over mitt romney is in the midwest, is in your region. what is -- what's the source of that? is that the auto rescue? is it the out of touch plutocratic heir of mitt romney? >> it's yes and yes. higher rates of unionization among white working class voters. it's the auto rescue but it's the part of the auto rescue especially for nonworking voters that are rarely talked about in national media. you have insight that most don't have on this, chris, i think, and it's the supply chain. tier 2 and 3 and tier 4 supply chain auto companies. the uaw members that work at the jeep plant in toledo that put together the wrangler, the liberty, and the uaw workers in youngstown that put together the

cruise that wouldn't be there in all likelihood without the auto rescue, they're already vote are for obama, voting for me, voting for democrats because they've had this process of understanding the auto rescue from the first day. the anxiety when they thought their lives were going to -- their communities and lives were so threatened and standard of living and all. but it's the tier 2 and 3 and 4 suppliers that might make the bolt that goes into the aluminum wheel that goes in cleveland and alcoa that go into the final assembly. those workers are likely to be non-union and those workers are learning increasingly that the auto rescue has mat terd to them. >> you know, senator brown, this is joy reid, do you feel like because -- i do think the republicans have bifurcated self interest among white working class voters from the cultural issues that draw them to the republican party. do you think that's more what's pulling those voters back to the democrats more than, let's say, paul ryan's issues on medicare?

in ohio that's a state where medicare is resonating with voters too. do you think the self-interest is coming back for these voters? >> well, i guess i don't -- i don't subscribe to the theory that white working class voters don't understand their self-interest on economic issues. i think we don't talk to them. they may in some cases vote on other issues and cultural issues. i'm sure that many do. that would account for the 20% of uaw workers in toledo or youngstown that don't vote for obama or me i assume, but i think the issue is we as democrats by and large fail to talk to the white working class, particularly white working class nonunion voters. we do very well among white working class union voters but not so well among nonunion voters. that's a complex array of issues there, but we don't talk to them about economic issues enough. that's why the discussion of my currency bill, the biggest nonpartisan jobs bill that passed the senate in 2011,

supported by a number of republicans, even quote unquote pro free trade people to level the effect on currency. they've seen a government that's betrayed them over the years and they want a government that's on their side. they didn't like nafta, they didn't like kafta. they don't like our trade policy and tax policy, they don't like the cayman islands parking money. all of those issues appeal to white working class voters who have been dealt a pretty bad deck of cards over the last 25 years. >> senator, you've been very outspoken on trade since your days in the house. in fact, you wrote a book on it and you've been talking about china a lot for a long time. china has now emerged in this election. obviously both candidates have tried to seize the mantle of being tough on china. and my question to you is, tough on china is something that every presidential candidate is during the campaign but there's a real

continuity in american policy, trade policy and foreign policy with china, and not necessarily because of that every candidate is lying or they're sellouts but because it's an incredibly complicated relationship. what's going to be different about a relationship with china if barack obama is elected versus mitt romney right after we take this commercial break. [ garth ] olaf's small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase, every day! helium delivery. put it on my spark card! [ pop! ] [ garth ] why settle for less? great businesses deserve the most rewards! awesome!!! [ male announcer ] the spark business card from capital one. choose unlimited rewards with 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet?

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we have senator sherrod brown from ohio. senator brown, i asked you about what our vision is for china. you sponsored a bill. what policy might look like under a democratic or republican administration. >> well, i think you look back to -- sometimes you want to look back to look forward. you look at the history of the two candidates, for one china. mitt romney's never shown much interest in enforcing trade rules in china. you've seen the ads and heard the president's discussion of what romney did at bain capital

so i don't have very high hopes for him doing much of anything positive with closing the trade imbalance between the u.s. and china and strengthening our economic relationship that way. president obama has been the most aggressive president actually since reagan in enforcing trade rules. i mentioned the steel, the aluminum, the tires and some work on solar panels and some other issues that the president has been aggressive in enforcing. the next step is our legislation. i organized 20 senators to send a letter to john boehner asking him to move forward on our legislation that had passed the senate bipartisanly to level the playing field on currency because that's the chinese method on every single import/export that really cheats, that makes the playing field not level. they subsidize other things, water, energy, capital, land depending on the product that they are exporting. but on currency, it clearly puts

our companies at a disadvantage to sell there and our companies here at a disadvantage competing with chinese imports and products coming from china to the u.s. so we know what we have to do there. if this legislation gets through, i think the president will sign it. i think it helps to change our relationship and i think it will help american manufacturing. i don't think there's any question about that. >> ro, you just wrote a book on manufacturing. the senator's talking about this leveling the playing field. this is just demagogue ri, protectionism. what is your response to those that say these kinds of actions are essentially fundamentally protectionist and backwards? >> there's no doubt, the senator is right. we have to have china accountable on fair trading, currency, intellectual property enforcement, not subsidizing. if you read henry kissinger on china, he will tell you what this requires is tough diplomacy, statesmanship and leadership that will bring about

changes in the regime. mitt romney is no henry chris sin ger. sloganearring is not going to work. everyone agrees we don't want china to manipulate its currency, we don't want them subsidizing their industries. how do you get from point a to point b? i think this administration has shown the diplomacy required. >> i want to bring up the currency thing. the chinese currency hit a 19 year high thursday or friday. why is it not going fast enough? they are actually strengthening the currency. why do he wouwe think they're n doing it at a fast enough pace or at a pace that would make a difference? >> senator brown, are you winning? >> yeah. i'm sorry. do you want me to answer that? >> yes. >> fundamentally i hear this comment about protectionism and i hear this comment about trade war and in many ways we are in a trade war. only one side's fighting.

the president just released -- just did a filing with the world trade organization on auto parts. ten years ago we had a $1 billion trade deficit with china bilateral. today it's $10 billion and that's not -- that's not based on chinese efficiency and productivity, it's based on a whole lot of subsidies in other ways which the obama administration has figured out. the reason it won't be a trade war is that the fears that sort of the outsourcers always try to stoke in the american public and among the media and certainly in congress is that we are such a huge market for china. something like more than 1/4 of chinese exports come to the united states. if you have a customer that's unhappy with you and that customer buys 20 or 30 or 40% of your products, you're not just going to turn your back, you're going to work with them. and the chinese work with us when we actually stand up to them on these issues. president clinton did it with

intellectual property from time to time and the chinese would respond. there would be histrionics, they'd scream and yell and then they'd change their behavior a little bit. the same with these issues when we've enforced trade rules. i want a good trading relationship with china, i just think it's too one sided. i think americans when the congress, when the international trade commission, when the department of commerce, when the white house, when the congress stands up, when we all stand up it makes a huge difference and the relationship will settle in in a way a bit more advantageous to the united states of america and to our manufacturing companies, the smaller ones especially, and the workers in this country. >> that's in some ways what you're saying, joe. it sounds like whatever is happening, it's working in terms of the appreciation of the chinese currency. quickly, ro. >> but i don't think it's let china appreciate the currency to the extent they want. it's having them have an exchange rate that's to the market and let's not forget, this is hurting people in china. it's hurting the consumers there

at the expense of elite exporters. so if you care about human rights, if you care about being progressive, you ought to care about the chinese currency. >> i guess a real quick point. the brazilian finance minister this week attacked our federal reserve for decreasing the value of the dollar and he used this term currency wars which everyone has glommed on to. i guess with china increasing the value of its currency, it doesn't strike me they're doing anything particularly unusual anymore. every country is involved in china manipulating currency is to get favorable terms. >> partly the problem is also that we're looking towards a future. everyone points to germany, export economies where everyone wants to be an exporter but not everyone can be an exporter. that's the problem is. people are seeing the way out of the recession is to be an exporter. i want to thank democratic sherrod brown for joining us from ohio this morning. >> thanks, chris. >> chair woman, sheila bair, now

the author of bull by the horns fighting to save many street from wall street and wall street from itself, joy reid and ro khanna and now the author of "entrepreneural nation: why manufacturing is still key to america's future." thank you for joining us. the nfl gives america a clear example of why unions matter up next. this: when the unexpected happens, there's one brand of battery more emergency workers trust in their maglites: duracell. one reason: duralock power preserve. it locks in power for up to 10 years in storage. guaranteed. so, whether it's 10 years' of life's sunny days... or... the occasional stormy one... trust goes a long way. duracell with duralock. trusted everywhere.

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because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. you can even take a full-size or above, and still pay the mid-size price. i'm going b-i-g. [ male announcer ] good choice business pro. good choice. go national. go like a pro. most high profile labor battle in america appears to be over for now. as the nfl national football league referees returned to the field thursday night to a standing ovation, perhaps the first time in recorded history that sports fans unanimously cheered officials. a tentative deal was reached wednesday but it was absence that had made the fan's hearts grow fonder. the owners of the nfl had refused referee contract provisions around salary and pension that would have cost the

league 1/3 of 1% of its revenue. 1/3 of 1%. the negotiations broke down they hired scab refs who routinely made obvious embarrassing mistakes, missed calls, and appeared in key moments to simply not understand some of the basic rules. one replacement ref even told a player he needed him for his fantasy team. the backlash culminated with a game between the packers and seahawks. in the final seconds of the final play the seahawks threw a hail mary into the end zone that was clearly intercepted by the green bay packers but one of the scab referees made a horrible call and mistakenly gave a winning touchdown to the seahawks. the country united in fury. my twitter stream went app pa plek particular. scott walker tweeted after catching a few hours of sleep the packers game is still

painful. president obama tweeted nfl fans on both sides of the aisle hope the refs' lockout is settled soon. the first bipartisan agreement the country has seen in months. joining me is gentleman mi la king and bill fletcher, junior, author of they're bankrupting us and 20 other myths about unions, also co-founder of the labor center for renewal. great to have you here. i thought this was a fascinating national experience. a, because we don't all agree on anything anymore. there was complete unanimity the refs were terrible. b, because the dynamics of this lockout, not strike, very important, of this lockout seemed to get at some core ideological aspects of the relationships between labor and management in a way that few do. and, mike, i'm curious what your perception is in terms of the

effect the bad call -- the horrible call on monday had in terms of the lockout ending. >> right. i think what it did was provide a cost because all along the owners can say no one watches the game for a ref. we're getting record ratings. we're going to make 9.5 billion with or without them. there was no cost. when, you know, the factory shuts down, they do the tabulation. if we lose this many days, if we lose this many workers, there is a clear cost. once there is a cost, not that bad call, the scab refs, picking the scab, every week they can say i can foresee this is actually having a tangible effect or a psychic effect. the 32 owners. 31, the green bay packers are owned collectively, they want to be prominent in their community. they don't want to go to their country clubs saying, what are you doing, bob kraft? let's settle this. >> is that your sense, jamilah? >> yes. i think the timing is important. i think national football is a

working class sports. they're tired of rich guys ruining the things they love. i think that folks were angry when there was that cost. you did see a game, a team lost a game because a ref didn't make the right call that, i think, was devastating for fans because it's what they do to relax, when they come home from work. >> here's what i found fascinating. you saw this unanimity. conservatives were saying pay the gd money. give me a break, 1/3 of 1%. this wasn't from the owners, it was ideological. this was about we can do what we want, bill? >> exactly. >> it's not about the dollars and cents on the table because the dollars and cents on the table were quite literally rounding here. >> we're seeing a lot of that. we're seeing a lot of this where basically they're doing it because they can, that is the owners are doing it. they're doing it because they feel like they have the upper hand but the other part of it is that they're doing it because they don't think that there will be a penalty, right?

they don't feel that in moving against in this case the referees, they didn't expect the kind of uproar. if you go beyond that, if you look at other workplace battles, the same thing is at stake, it's not covered by the media. let me say one other thing, chris. it's important that this happened after the chicago teachers strike. i think that has really helped to change a lot of the thinking because there was this vibrancy in the strike, there was community support. the teachers were locked in with the parents and so i think that there's something about climate change, so to speak. >> joe? >> let me make a few points. one is, i don't really buy this whole thing, it is a rounding error. your salary is probably a rounding error to this company. it doesn't mean you can ask for three times what you get and they should just give it to you. >> well, yeah. >> that would be a rounding error too.

furthermore, maybe everyone else knew this but i didn't. i didn't realize most of these refs had good jobs in the real world, they're like corporate lawyers, a lot of them, some of them are traders. i'm thinking, why don't they get pensions to these people who have full time jobs elsewhere. most of them seem to be pretty well paid. i guess those are my two. it's interesting that the owners are socialists who share all of their money. >> here's -- what you just said i think is fascinating. you think about these workers as refs. they are incredibly a nam mow louse workers. part time workers, they have other jobs. they're compensated quite well. if you forget about everything else and you just look at the gig they have, it's a pretty curby gig, okay? but what's amazing is that in locking them out, the owners almost like led america to marxist labor theory of value because what they did was they showed that actually even though their market wage is not that much, you know, it's $120,000, $140,000, the value they create for the enterprise is huge,

right? it's a question of what kind of value -- if you take them away, does the value of the enterprise stay around? it doesn't. >> that very argument hurts a lot of other workers, a lot of workers who are making socks or used to be making socks in south carolina, who are making machinery and the value to the country. >> is easily replaceable. >> right. a couple other points. there is a reason why the owners wanted to stay tough. they didn't need the money and they wanted the money. the reason they're billionaires is because they want the money. also they wanted to show that they had a strong back bone for the real negotiation with the players coming up. if they could show they were intractable, you can't negotiate with these crazy guys, it might have helped them in the next negotiation. i don't think there was a we're sick of rimp people going on, i think it's more where sports is the place where fairness rules. it's the one place in our lives where we know no one is going to spin us. whoever has the final score didn't beat expectations, they beat the packers, right?

once that stops happening the nfl is sullied. i think that for a lot of reasons it's a great opportunity to have this conversation about unions, but the analogy isn't that strong because so many unions are dealing with companies and sectors of society where they're not making tons of money. and the unions in the nfl and pro sports, those are very profitable companies. it's a whole different dynamic. >> i want to talk about how the fact that most highly covered labor battles in this country now happen in professional sports and what that does for our perception about organized labor right after this. plus d with efficient absorption in one daily dose. citracal slow release.

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work part time for the obama administration in the budget office. they see the national debt clock staring them in the face, they see a debt crisis and they just ignore and pretend it didn't even happen. they're trying to pick the winners and losers and they don't even do that very well. a bit lame. vice president paul ryan forced to compare the president to the replacement refs. we're talking about the lockout and the nfl referees. i asked the question before break, what does it do to american perception of labor, so many of them, the ones that get the coverage, we'll have an nhl lockout, there was an nfl lockout last year. >> i think there's this underlying sense that no matter how much americans love football, it's an endangered commodity. it's a brutal sport. when i was a kid i remember

watching the detroit lions game and seeing a player get hit on the field. every time i watch a kickoff, i'm dreading it. i'm holding my breath. there's that. then you also have the fact that sports are this amazing way to meet people. you can go to any place and make enemies, fenemies or friends. >> across partisan divides. that is the amazing thing about sports. that was the amazing thing about the unanimity on the refs. the thing you were saying about the dangers of football. we'll talk about this and do our own discussion on it after the election about traumatic brain injury, but because football is so dangerous, i mean, it's a very unsafe workplace, the nfl football environment. if anyone needs a union, it's people operating in an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly dangerous environment. >> i think that's why in the last nfl player lockout there was a lot of sympathy for the players. usually these things break down,

millionaires versus billionaires. people were saying in a way they never have before, these guys are putting their heads on the line. even beyond public perception of unions and what we think, it's a little bit like the old line about congress where congress is unpopular but you like your congressman. i think we've seen a lot of examples about where unions don't poll well. when a strike happens to the people they work with, like in chicago, those teachers, public opinion polls were on their side. in california when the grocery workers struck, people didn't want to pay a lot for groceries. there was sympathy. >> the transit union strike which was a massive pain for every new yorker. that's how people get around. i thought there would be huge public sentiment. this was 2006. there was public support. >> this is actually why i want to take issue with something she raised earlier, joe. i think what you were laying out is a slippery slope. if you start talking about, well, why do these workers need a pension, why are they being

paid this much? we've been down that road before and it always end up justifying, pushing people further and further down to accept and to accommodate themselves to less and less. what the refs were saying, it's basically about fairness. and i'm not very excited about what the ultimate settlement was. >> yeah. we should point out it's very unclear who won this. >> precisely. >> there were three issues on the table, there was a salary increase which they got. there was converting a pension from a defined contribution -- defined benefit pension to defined contribution 401 k which they delayed implementation of by five years. there was a reserve group of full-time refs who can be used to swap in for refs they feel aren't performing at a high enough level. that fight was somewhat similar to the chicago teachers union strike about how management was going to evaluate quality. that is still going to be implemented. there was a lot of talk about this -- you saw these corrections being appended to a lot of articles saying, oh,

sorry we said it was a strike, it's not a strike, it's a lockout. what is a lockout, bill fletcher, so folks understand? >> a lockout is when the employer won't let people go to work. it's as simple as that. they say you're not coming in because we have not reached an agreement and we're going to pressure you until you scream and so a strike is when the workers make the determination that the negotiations have broken down and that they need to put pressure on the employer. this was a lockout and we're seeing increased lockouts as employers feel that they have more power and they feel that they can actually isolate the workers in order to completely weaken them. >> we have some data on that. really interesting. as a percentage of work stoppag stoppages, we've seen an increase from 2007 to 2011. it's incredibly rare, lockouts, because for obvious reasons. the reasons you said. you're costing your enterprise a

lot of money presumably if you're locking out workers, yet we've seen in increased management militancy more lockouts. >> mike brought up a good point during the break. he brought up the fact there was a lot of anger and outrage with fans, but players weren't necessarily -- they were upset about it. they didn't stliek in solidarity, right? they didn't actually take a stand themselves. they offered, oh, i have all this money, i can pop this money and get the refs back on the feel. it's really important to know that there is this divide. i think that, you know, players need to also hold themselves accountable. >> we've lost the culture of solidarity. that's the issue. in many parts of the world, actually most parts of the world the idea of solidarity strikes, of expressing that kind of support is not uncommon at all. in the united states we've lost that culture. >> they're also illegal. >> that's right. that's the other thing i was going to point out. >> right. >> the law does make that illegal and, therefore, the workers in each case have to make the determination, are they

prepared to break the law. >> but just going back to that graph you showed. a huge reason why lockouts are a higher percentage of strikes, there are almost no strikes anymore. >> exactly. >> there was 19 strikes in 2011 and, you know, 12 and 10 before then. we haven't had more than 20 strikes in companies, more than a thousand people for years and years. in the '80s there were hundreds of strikes. unions are getting less powerful. a lot of lockouts is one of the huge issues with every union is pensions. they're portrayed as a time bomb. they are an onerous cost because of health care and other things. and you lock out workers who have a contract that the owner thinks is paying them too much. it's why companies -- it's kind of -- i love covering sports, but when i have to spend so much time on the nfl and no one ever says anything about the american sugar crystal lockout which is going on over a year and people are not making $150,000 which the part-time refs were making. that should be paid attention

to. >> the nfl was 30, 40 years kind of a backwater in the american sports world and it's now the most successful, by far the most profitable. i want to talk about what has happened and why that is after we take this break. are you ready ?

to.

talking about the nfl lockout of the referees union which ended provisionally on thursday night but we just got cross from the wires, the ap is reporting the nfl referees union has agreed to now officially the eight-year contract that was put on the table. and one of the things i asked before we went to the break is how did the nfl become such a profitable enterprise? it wasn't always this way. it was kind of a backwater. i wanted to play this clip because i thought it was an interesting look behind the curtain. this is dan patrick and john lynch talking. john lynch is a commentator talking about what he was told about how to discuss the referee lockout by the league management. check it out. >> i know week one, you know, the league i think duped every

network and called and said, hey, we're close to a deal so have your guys go easy. that was kind of the edict from up top. go easy on these guys. >> i did not hear that. you guys were told a deal was imminent, don't be critical? >> don't say anything, but just be careful. be close. they duped us like everybody else. so the next week it was take the gloves off, say whatever you want. and we have. >> that was one of the fascinating aspects of this is here you have all of these commentators who have lucrative contracts with the nfl who are completely unbrigdled about the criticism. they care about their brand. they've managed the brand so effectively. they've created such an enterprise. they didn't seem to worry about that brand being tarnished. >> that was one of the remarkable things. after the catch on monday night, there were bad calls all through the three weeks, but then the lid was off. you saw the espn commentators going to town. >> almost crying actually. >> steve young had this cree

decor, i can't believe what they are doing to the shield. they are image conscious is because a guy who died last week, steve sabol started nfl films. they branded this, the mix of mythology and pathos and he did such a good job of convincing us with his camera shots and story telling elevating the nfl to a place beyond sport. the other huge reason why the nfl is so popular isn't accident, it's because it's so brutal. you can't play it more than once a week. everyone who knows about economics, scarcity correlates to demand. all other leagues schedule these games. nfl, one game a week. it's a special thing. you talk about it. that helps the nfl. >> i think football is broadcast gold, right? over the past 20 years it's become a production in and of itself. it's arguably better and funner to watch a football game on tv than to go to one. >> absolutely. yes, that's absolutely the case. and it's funny how the league is trying to deal with this

scarcity issue while also making more money because now i find it's like there's the early game on sunday, late game, sunday night, monday night, thursday night. before you know it there's going to be seven nights a week you'll have a ffbl game. >> started with a wednesday night game which is the first time in 80 years they've played on wednesday. >> what do we know now that we didn't know last week? my answer after this. o!!! so that's ten security gators, right? put them on my spark card! why settle for less? testing hot tar... great businesses deserve the most rewards! [ male announcer ] the spark business card from capital one. choose unlimited rewards with 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet? here's your invoice. so it can feel like you're using nothing at all. but neosporin® eczema essentials™ is different. its multi-action formula restores visibly healthier skin in 3 days. neosporin® eczema essentials™.

so what do we know now we didn't last week? we know who provided financial backing for the new film "won't back down." conservative media mougles rupert and. they turn the school into a nonunionized charter.

they have pushed for parental trigger laws signed in seven streets. we know that rupert murdoch's media empire is in education. they talk about the teachers driven by their own financial interests. they don't say much about the motives of those on the other side of the battle. we know another neat tax avoid dance trick. a loophole referred to in the tax accounting industry as i dig it. i am not making that up. it allows the practitioners to pass assets to children and grandchildren without paying the gift tax. the trust set up for his children and grandchildren made an investment in an internet advertising return that reaped 1,000% return. we know that they have opposed abolishing such trusts used by wealthy as vehicles for tax avo avo avoidance. one consistent theme seems to be a staed fast single minded focus

on making sure he doesn't pay much in taxes the u.s. troop surge in afghanistan failed because the nato in afghanistan produced a report that writes according to the report, before the surge, insurgents used nearly 600 homemade bombs against u.s. andal plid forces. by august, 2012, near the end of the surge, the number was just over 600. u.s. combat are scheduled to end by 2014. the longest war in american history has received relatively scant media attention. part of the reason is that we don't know what afghanistan policy mitt romney is proposing. we know there is a huge political opportunity for him to get to the president's left and call for a more rapid withdrawal. we also know the right wing foreign policy elites would never let him dethat. i want to find out what my guests know now they didn't know when the week began. jimmy, what do we know? >> we know everyone is not excited about the barclay

center, the new home for the brooklyn nets. there were protests when the stadium opened. folks are upset the developers didn't keep their promises to communities, most of them of color about affordable housing and job promises. that's something we need to keep an eye on. >> the barclay center was a subject of a huge drawnout battle and controversy. the way it ended up getting built was a set of promises being made, a certain amount of affordable housing and good living jobs. so far, the initial promises don't look like they are being met. a lot of back door deals an eminent domain. it is really a crazy story in and of itself. >> a chart you showed earlier showed the trajectory of u.s. employment compared to other financial crises, japan, sweden, spain. it showed the u.s. has had one of the best recoveries of any post-banking crisis. the really interesting thing is that the very best performing country was japan, whose bailout

process everyone mocked and the worst performing country was sweden, which everyone praised. the bailouts were completely fantastic. we should do them over and over again without apology. tim geithner and the obama administration and bush are completely vindy kuwaiteicated. >> there is no express of public sentiment that the good people of boston will not tag with a yankees suck channel. supporters of elizabeth warren were being heckled with a tomahawk chop because they shamed indian heritage. to counter this, yankees suck, yankees suck was chanted. can you imagine if all

bosstonians making statements had to be countered with that or the defense of the people shot in the boss thomton massacre. the yankees do not suck. they will be making the playoffs. the team under was boston red sox. >> bill fletcher? >> the extent to which the countries of the world will allow israeli prime minister netanyahu to distract everyone's attention to the worsening conditions of the palestinians and instead focus on whether he is going to pull the trigger and launch a catastrophic strike against iran. >> you are referring to netanyahu's speech before the united nations general assembly which he held up a much-mocked cartoon bomb and talked about iran. the deeper issue is that the focus on iran has conveniently meant that international focus particularly in the west and u.s. is not on the occupied

territories. we don't pay attention to the west unless there is violence and what we are doing is producing extremely perverse incentives. if we don't pay attention when they are acting nonviolent, my thanks to gentleman mila con, joe wisen that you will, mike paska and bill fletcher, author of "they're bankrupting us" 20 other myths about unions. thanks for getting up. thanks for joining us on "up." tomorrow, i will have jeffrey toobin and mona eltahawi on her arrest for spray painting over an anti-islam poster. coming up, melissa harris perry. this week looks at voter i.d. laws. how is anyone expected to keep up?

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